I think I have a cable you can have. Maybe! At least I used to..
Chord DAC differences
- Thread starter TheManWhoBuiltTheMoon
- Start date
I think I have a cable you can have. Maybe! At least I used to..
Enjoy your new toy! (Just watch out you don’t overload your preamp - the Qutest can deliver 3V at its highest setting).Okay, I'm happy to announce I'm the new owner of a Qutest, and it's here with me already as I just drove over to Bollo hifi in the south west of Glasgow and collected it in person
This was actually my second trip to Bollo today and the second Qutest I've bought as the first one didn't come with a power supply. The first one was an 'as-new, open-box' unit but unfortunately, neither I nor the guy checked it to make sure all the accessories were present; the DAC wasn't exactly in 'as new' icondition f I'm being honest so there was that as well. Still, not wanting to name and shame anybody just for the sake of it, I waited to see how Bollo would deal with this slight snafu (I know, it was partly my snafu as well) before reporting here. The solution? Bollo simply swapped the open-box unit for a brand new one with brand new and sealed everything inside! Hats off to Robert at Bollo for proper first class customer service!
Right, excuse me while I do some important hibernating...
windhoek
The Phoolosopher
I already knew about the variable output voltage so the first thing I did was to change it to 2v. Choosing a filter? Now that's another matter! I'll probably just stick with the white option (the most direct signal option as far as I can tell) and then see how I get on from there. I haven't listened to it yet - I've been busy loading music onto portable storage so I can hook up the DAC to my blu ray player; the SSD only came today so I was going to be doing that regardless of whether I bought a DAC.
Colin123
pfm Member
Andrew1401
New Member
Intrigued that you were using a Hugo 2 with an NDX2. I'm surprised that a near 6k source warrants a seperate DAC, however Chord has a particular sound, which is not the same as Naim and perhaps thats what you are looking for?
windhoek
The Phoolosopher
So far, I've been more than happy with the Qutest, and barring a sudden 'must spend money like it's going out of fashion' rush of blood to the head, it'll be staying put for the foreseeable future. Everything seems to have its own space within the soundstage and overall it's smooth and crystal clear. It's probably not the DAC for The Clash or The Sex Pistols, but for everything else, it's perfectly adequate when it comes to slam, attack and high energy, not to mention the finer moments as well. Golden Sound has it covered in the review below, although I don't think it's quite as refined and polite as he suggests - admittedly, he's comparing it to the Chord Dave in that regard so I can see why the contrast is so apparent to him in that scenario. As for where it fits in my system, it's connected to my Bluesound Node 2i and my OPPO 103D blu ray player via its coax digital inputs.
Like all good hi-fi, whereby every piece of kit should give you something to justify the cost and space it takes up in your system, the Qutest has an enjoyable presentation that makes it a keeper (as always, no promises as to how long that'll be in the end due to this hobby of ours where reason and desire so often misalign).
I thought you were prone to those? ;0)